Is Shibuya Tokyo’s own 'Jersey Shore?'

Anyone with a pulse on pop culture has heard of the “Jersey Shore” gang -- those brash, over-tanned and humorously styled Italian-American
20-somethings made stars on MTV’s reality show of the same name.

In Japan it is in broadcast as “Macaroni Rascals: The Jersey Shore Life.” But we don’t need Jersey’s introduction to crass culture because Tokyo has long had its own cesspool of bad taste, and it’s called Shibuya.

The J-Shore amateurs have nothing on these “gyaru” girls and “gyaru-o” boys.

Pauly Del Vecchio's highlighted hair may standout, but in Shibuya virtually everyone has colored their natural black to one color or another.

Sparkle bright

It is another notch on the bedpost of bad taste every time a Jersey Shore star appears in public with a little bit of cheap bedazzled bling, like Pauly is wont to do.

Well, we have no sympathy as we innocent Tokyoites have been grappling with the glare of bedazzled everything for years now.

Jeans, mobile phones, fingernails, Zippo lighters, eyelashes and cosmetic cases, anything with a surface that can take a few hundred glued-on crystals has been or will be kirakira (sparkle)-ized.

Shibuya bling isn't only on dresses and jewelry, but covers every personal item the locals carry.

Gyaru is to Guido

The style of dress on Jersey Shore leaves little to the imagination.

And so it shall be in Shibuya, where skin real estate is in abundance with micro skirts being the new mini-skirt and booty briefs the new leggings.

What’s more, epileptic seizure-sensitive souls should steer clear of the 109 mall, where stores are zealous about accosting your eyesight with searing colors and garish patterns from all angles.

And the boys? They keep it real and real classy: fried rainbow hair, oh yeah.

Deeply tanned and keen to show it, the Shibuya gals can out-brown their Jersey rivals and look natural with it. Kind of.

Can you say that again?

To listen to the Jersey Shore stars speak is like hearing a language spoken by an indigenous tribe whose colloquialisms are as nuanced as a
pool ball (if you have the stomach, google “grenade” or “land mine”).

Shibuya’s teens too speak their own tongue, often with a sickening drawl like they have a bag of marbles in their mouth.

The girls spout such endearing terms as "agepoyo" (getting hyper and happy), and boys "kingyo busu" (someone so ugly they can’t be saved, like a goldfish).

Next up: Shibuya Shore?

While America might find “Jersey Shore” a case of national embarrassment, Japan is hell bent on making the gyaru culture a hit in foreign
countries.

After all, the subtitle of the Tokyo Girls Collection, the massively popular gyaru fashion and lifestyle event, is “From Tokyo to the World!”